Moving is not my forte. Well, I suppose that moving is NO ONE’s forte, but there are people who move for a living, so perhaps they enjoy their job. I can’t be sure. So I’ll go with “most people hate to move.” I, myself, as previously stated, am one of those people.

It’s not the packing or unpacking, it’s the goodbyes that go along with it. While moving from a house to an apartment wasn’t quite the same sort of job that required actual movers or anything, it was still hard to say goodbye to the home I’d been lovingly restoring for years. I never expected to leave.

I’d begun moving on Wednesday, the day after the Comcast debacle began, which, I’m beginning to doubt that Comcast actually DOES care, or they wouldn’t have made me waste approximately two days to get Internet, but that, my wonderful Pranksters, is neither here nor there. (but it does make an excellent story for another day)

Box after box, I loaded into the van, pretending to be an overly large ant simply bringing offerings to the queen. It helps if I can visualize something like that or I get annoyed at the bruises that now make it appear as though I’ve been thoroughly beaten with whips and chains or boxes I happened to fill just this side of too heavy.

Three trips later, we were nearly done transporting boxes from this place to my new home, all over but the furniture and a couple of boxes that could only be packed at the last minute because they contained items like, “Marshmallow Fluff” and “Socks.” I mean, a day without socks is a day not worth living, and I wasn’t stupid enough to wear flimsy flippity-flops to move in, although that does seem to be something I’d do. Four inch heals?Sure! Let’s go run a marathon! Imma beat you motherfuckers! Just as soon as I fix this broken heel and nurse the 27 blisters on my feet that I got already. Wait, it’s ONLY been two minutes? That’s bullshit.

It was weird, seeing my life packed up like that. I’d always thought that I had more stuff, but it turns out that my ritual purging had truly paid off. And not just because I’d already managed to dump my shit at the scary Salvation Army donations center, but because my life in boxes? Turns out, that well before this debacle began, I’d purged just the right amount of stuff to fit into my one-bedroom apartment. In fact, the only things I really needed to make my house a home were pieces of (cheap) furniture.

Target, you are my BFF forever and ever and ever. Except for the Pranksters who are my family.

Saturday, I brought my Muppet girlchild with me to the U-haul place nearby to pick up one of those truck thingies and managed to fill it – in one trip – with the furniture I could call my own, which means that I’ve been able to actually sit somewhere that is not the floor while I sort through my crap.

Slowly, I’ve been unpacking, cleaning, and placing things in my very own space. Because the space is smaller than the home I once lived in, it’s been much easier to utilize the space that I do have, paring down the items I own further, and making my apartment my home.

While leaving my home of 7 years has been incredibly hard, for the first time in my life, everything seems simpler.

“With… what?” he asked, looking for clarity. When I need “help” with something, it can be anything from getting my whites whiter or building a shrine to BILLY FUCKING MAYS in my (former) backyard, and he knows it.

“Um, stuff,” I replied, aiming to be as vague as possible so that I could get a “sure, no problem,” without having to answer second-level questions.

“Like…?” He replied, apparently knowing me too well.

“Building stuffs,” I dangled in front of him like a carrot. I know him well enough to know that building shit = happy pants, while I’d just as soon cut off my toes and make a necklace of toe bones to wear than put stuff together.

“Ooooh! I like building stuffs!” He said, happily.

“I know! That’s why you’re perfect for this,” I said.

A couple of hours later, he showed up at my house, knocking before entering. I answered the door, kids piling over each other like a barrel of puppies, each trying to get him to greet them first. He swept them up into his arms and kissed them hello. “Hi Babies,” he said, brushing hair from Mimi’s face so she could see. She still stubbornly refuses to wear clips in her curls, which can make things like “walking” and “seeing stuff,” a little challenging for her.

I stood there, biding my time, waiting for him to be done with the children. Or, I should say, the children to be done with HIM.

“HEY,” I said, as he disentangled children from his frame, which they’d climbed like a couple of monkeys (without, thankfully, throwing poo)(THAT TIME). “Got something to show you. Meet me out front.”

With that, I walked into the garage and flipped the switch, opening the garage door which protested wheezily, but obliged. I walked out into the sea of boxes and held my hands out all jazz-hands meets spirit-fingers style.

“TA-DA!” I nearly shouted, trilling the last bit, relishing one of the last times I could be loud without the worry of irritating one of my neighbors in my new apartment.

“Woah,” he said.

I beamed.

“Where’s the stuff to build?” he asked.

“Um, somewhere in there,” I gestured to the pile of boxes I’d packed, wondering how I’d manage to pack a life into so few boxes.

A smile played mildly on the corner of his lips.

“You just conned me,” he pointed out.

“Yup,” I said, proudly. “Now let’s get moving.”

He stood there, shaking his head, amused, before grabbing a box and playing crap Tetris in the back of my van.

Before you get all THINK OF THE CHILDREN, don’t mistake my meaning: It’s not that I don’t love my babies or anything, it’s that I like my sleep more. And adding two babies to my bed means that I spend half the night being kicked in the kidneys by a toddler who prefers to sleep horizontally because sleeping vertically is, apparently, full of the lame. I’d thought we’d gotten past the whole “kicking my internal organs” thing once I popped her out of my body, but I was wrong.

Adding to my bed another child – Alex – who’s five, means that he worms his way across his sleeping sister so that he can poke my eyeballs and stick his fingers up my sleeping nose, giggling uproariously until he’s sleepy enough to drift back into the land of nod.

By the time the sun peeks through the bedroom window, I’m staring glassy-eyed at the fug green of my walls and wondering how the sun got to be so damn bright at 7AM. Shouldn’t there be a law against that? I feel like their should be. Maybe I should sue the sun.

I’m starting to feel like it might be time to start shopping for kids bunk beds. Not for me, because, as someone who once broke a toe making a sandwich THAT WASN’T EVEN FOR ME, I’m about as able to sleep on a top bunk without breaking something as I am to eat a jar of mayo. I’ll do a lot for a bet, but that doesn’t come close.

Part of the reason I’d dig a bunk bed for the Littles is because, as the last born with a sibling ten years my senior, I’d always thought the idea of having a special cozy bunk bed would be full of the awesome. I mean – a bed. With a sibling on top of me. The thought of that makes me nostalgic for my childhood, in the same way a Bob Seger song does – nostalgia without a hint of experience.

See? You listen to that and you’re all, OMG HE KNOWS WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE A MUSICIAN JUST LIKE ME – I’M A MUSICIAN ON TOUR, TOO. Until you realize you can’t even play the triangle without a stunt double.

I’m probably wrong. I have to imagine that if I did, in fact, manage to get a bunk bed for the Littles, they’d still want to

a) Sleep in my bed

2) Have ME sleep in their bunk bed with them, a situation that would NOT work out well.

So for the time being, I’m going to guess that I’ll just “wake up” each morning with a couple of kids poking me and sticking their fingers in my mouth, laughing uproariously.

I won’t lie. I like seeing the tiny Muppets curled up in my bed. My kidneys, though, they tell another story.

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Do you do the family bed thing, Pranksters? Have you used bunk beds before? Where are my pants?